Editorial

The Other Side of the Needle’s Eye Peter Mommsen What is money for? The history of Christian radicalism suggests one surprising answer.

Dispatch

Pay As You Can Robert Lockridge At a café where we grow the food and don’t name a price, we’re still learning new mindsets.

Essays

Selling Friends Clare Coffey In multilevel marketing, friendship is not the means to the sell – it is the thing being sold. Princess of the Vatican Sharon Rose Christner What happens when a Roman palazzo becomes a homeless shelter? In Praise of Costly Magnificence Alastair Roberts Mary of Bethany shows the beauty of extravagance. The Religion of Mammon Eberhard Arnold Money and God are enemies. We must choose one or the other. Saving the Commons Jack Bell As the Industrial Revolution took off in Britain, William Cobbett rose in defense of the cottage economy.

Personal History

Leper Colony Sketches Maria Weiss and Maureen Burn A woman finds pain and friendship in the enforced community of outcasts at a Paraguayan leper colony.

Reading

Ownership and Communion Peter Riedemann A sixteenth-century Anabaptist spells out the economics of the Apostles’ Creed. Where Your Treasure Is Nikolai Berdyaev, Basil the Great, Maria Skobtsova, C. S. Lewis and Dorothy Day Five readings from Christian thinkers challenge our assumptions about money.

Poetry

Poem: “Clair de lune” Jean L. Kreiling Clair de lune from Claude Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque in memory of my mother. Poem: “Argument of Periapsis” Midge Goldberg Is there sound in space? We try / saying what we really mean to say. Poem: “Advent” Matthew King It seems as though it never has to die / as long as it continues on its way.

Fiction

History Arrives on the Island Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa C. Hayden Read the first chapter of Eugene Vodolazkin’s new novel, A History of the Island, the chronicle of an island from medieval to modern times.

Editors’ Picks

Editors’ Picks: Thin Places Allison Backous Troy The Ireland of Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s Thin Places offers more than a token sense of generic mysticism. Editors’ Picks: Dinosaurs James Smoker Lydia Millet’s novel Dinosaurs points to community but remains clear-eyed about the failures of human beings to live well together. Editors’ Picks: Natality Caitrin Keiper Jennifer Banks’s spectacular book Natality considers Hannah Arendt's idea that humans “are not born in order to die but in order to begin.”

Family and Friends

The Mustard Seed Project Ute Paul, Michael Weinmann and Chris Zimmerman Plough interviews members of The Mustard Seed Project, a small city mission in Gotha, Germany. Feasting at Teatime Jeremiah Barker At Madonna House, we work hard not to get rich but so that we can stop and celebrate.

Community Snapshot

On Owning Twenty-Two Cars Maureen Swinger What is it like to live in a community where you possess nothing but share everything?

Forum

Letters from Readers Readers respond to Plough’s Spring 2023 issue, Pain and Passion.

Interview

Enchanted Capitalism Eugene McCarraher Modern capitalism claims to be secular. It’s anything but.

Portfolio

The Last of the Cuban Revolutionaries Harvey Maltese What’s left of Fidel Castro’s revolution seventy years after it began?

Forerunners

Hudson Taylor Maureen Swinger and Susannah Black Roberts “When I am a man, I mean to be a missionary and go to China.”

Covering the Cover

Covering the Cover: Money Rosalind Stevenson Most of us have at one time or another felt entangled by money’s effects on our interactions with others.